Collected Poems

Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) joined the Court after his university days and served in King Charles I's brief and inglorious military campaign in Scotland. He was given the position of a "Gentlemen Wayter Extra-ordinary" to the King, and wrote an elegy to the Princess Katherine, who died the day she was born. After the failure of the Scottish campaign, he returned to his home in Kent, where he took up public posts befitting his standing. Alas, in 1642 he was imprisoned in Westminster for his...